Monday, September 8, 2014

The inside story of how a group of volunteers stopped the Islamic State from discovering the truth about Steven Sotloff.

Steven
Sotloff wasn’t my friend. Like most observers, the first time I heard about him
was August 19, 2014 when his life was threatened on camera by the Islamic State
following the beheading of fellow journalist James Foley. I casually caught up
on what was known of his abduction the year before and looked at the still
shots of him in the middle of the desert, stone-faced with a shaved head,
wearing an orange jumpsuit, being threatened with death by an English-accented
militant who probably had a western upbringing similar to Steven's.

I
did a quick Google search and, to my surprise, couldn’t find much. I found it
suspicious how little information there was of this supposedly hungry Middle
East journalist on the web. Living in Israel, where the fate of kidnapped
Israelis is widely reported and the subject of major national awareness
campaigns, I attributed this to apathy on the part of Americans. It shocked and
even revolted me that Steven had been missing for more than twelve months and
no one anywhere, not even in his hometown, seemed to know or care. Little did I
know this was nothing more than an elaborate illusion.

The
day after the video went viral, I was hanging out at a friend’s apartment when
I received an abrupt phone call from Gregg Roman, an old buddy of mine from my
days in the Israel Defense Forces. Gregg, the Director of the Jewish Community
Relations Council at the Pittsburgh Jewish Federation, is a seasoned expert on
security and politics in the Middle East and is a frequent commentator on a
number of news channels, including Al-Jazeera.

Gregg
tried making small talk with me for about fifteen seconds before he cut to the
chase. He asked me if I’d heard of Steven Sotloff. I said of course. He asked
me if I knew Steven Sotloff personally. No, I didn't. Why would I know Steven
Sotloff of all people?

“This is confidential information,”
Gregg said. “You can’t tell anyone. Steven Sotloff is a friend of mine. From
when he lived in Israel.”

My
stomach tightened.

“Steven
studied with me at the IDC (the Inter-Disciplinary Center, a private college in
Herzliya). He’s a proud Jew and he’s an Israeli citizen.”

I didn't know Steven Sotloff personally, but through this experience I felt like I did. My friends who knew him say he was one unforgettable guy. He is extremely missed.

Gregg
explained that he was serving as a spokesperson for the Sotloff family. He
briefly told me how Steven’s family kept silent about his abduction because of
IS threats to murder him if his situation was made public. Steven’s family
feared, rightfully, that if his Jewish and Israeli identities were known to his
captors, he and every other captive would be summarily executed. In the Arab
Middle East, any link to the Jewish people or Israel, no matter how tenuous,
will raise suspicion that one is a spy. Spies get tortured and eventually
murdered. And the problem was Steven’s connections to the Jewish people and
Israel were not tenuous whatsoever.

The
Sotloff family and their immediate network made a heroic effort to remove every
trace of Steven’s connection to the Jewish people and Israel from the Internet.
Requests were made (and granted) to remove articles he’d written for Israeli
newspapers or about Israel from the Internet. His Facebook and Twitter profile
and activity were deleted, as were online comments by anyone wondering about
his whereabouts or his background. Anyone who was aware that Steven had been
kidnapped was asked to maintain a strict code of silence and refrain from
speaking about his circumstances with anyone.

To
people like me who didn’t know him, it was less like Steven Sotloff disappeared
and more like he never existed.

After
Steven suddenly appeared in the video of James Foley’s execution, the cat was
out of the bag for lack of a better expression. People who knew him started
asking how he got into this mess. People who didn’t know him started trying to
get to know him and began digging around his background and personal history.

Steven’s
parents feared that Steven’s true faith and identity would be plastered all
over the news. To prevent that, they and their advisors agreed that an
additional channel needed to be created; a channel separate from official
government efforts to free Steven and also from those who merely had personal
relationships with Steven. That was how my friend Gregg Roman got involved. The
family informed Gregg of the situation and asked him to set up a channel using
whatever resources he could muster up.

Gregg
began making phone calls and within a day had assembled a group of roughly a
dozen unpaid volunteer experts in public relations, broadcast media, social
media, kidnapping and ransom, and key languages. Gregg asked me to come on
board as the group’s Arabic language coordinator.

“I
know you’re super busy and you have a million other important things going on
right now,” Gregg said haltingly.

“I’ll
do it,” I interrupted.

An
hour later after midnight I joined a conference call with Gregg and many of the
other volunteer experts. Very few of us knew Steven, but now he and his life
were at the top of our priority list. In a matter of minutes, Steven became
much more than a friend to me. He became a righteous cause.

The
people on that phone call were individuals with vast networks of connections in
media, the Jewish community, and in countries hostile to the United States and
Israel. Each of us was given explicit instructions for our specific tasks. Many
of these people literally dropped everything and began working on Steven’s case
full time.

A
major topic of early discussion was on how to keep the local Miami Jewish
community, where Steven’s parents were active members, silent. The American
Jewish community has a strong track record of fighting virtuously and publicly
for great causes. The case of Steven Sotloff, however, was not a cause that
could be made public.

A
closed Facebook group was created called “BRING HIM HOME” that gave people
involved with our efforts a forum to share information and coordinate. A hundred
or so additional volunteers joined the group and made very important
contributions. Those with specific expertise continued to communicate via
conference call and directly through Gregg and other family spokespeople.

From
the moment the “BRING HIM HOME” group was created, it was literally active
non-stop. People scoured the Internet and social media for any reference to
Steven’s Jewish or Israeli identity. Any time an ambiguous post was uploaded
onto any social media site that could have any connection to Steven, people
worked vigorously to have it deleted. News outlets and individual journalists
who got wind of Steven’s story were asked to keep their information to
themselves. Articles in the Daily Mail and the New York Times reporting on
Steven’s Jewish roots were immediately removed.

My
role focused on monitoring Arabic media for any mention of Steven or any
conspiracy theories about him. I scanned mainstream Arabic news portals such as
Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, A-Sharq Al-Awsat, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, and Al-Watan for
any written reports or videos analyzing Steven and his background. I searched
Steven's name in Arabic on Google using multiple variations to find any posts
or blogs that may have featured him as a topic. I followed the Islamic State on
Twitter and read the frequent posts published about the targeted bombing by US
forces. Steven, though, was largely (and thankfully) ignored.

I
was actually very surprised at how little there was written directly about
Steven across Arabic media. When I was a journalist for the Times of Israel
newspaper, I wrote a bi-weekly column about Arabic media. I knew that many
stories in the Arabic press are simply lifted from American and even Israeli
media outlets and re-written for an Arabic audience. Many of the major Arabic
dailies, such as A-Sharq Al-Awsat and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, are not even based in
the Middle East, but in London. Furthermore, originality has never been a
phrase used to describe Arab journalism, except perhaps in the case of Al-Jazeera.

The
lack of discourse was eye opening, but as I conducted more research, it started
to make sense. Most Arabic media outlets typically represent the regimes the
Islamic State seeks to topple, so very few mainstream Arab journalists are
currently on the ground reporting from Islamic State territory. Nearly all
their information is coming from western news bureaus. As a result, I was
unable to find any piece in the Arabic media related to Steven with a different
take than their western counterparts.

For
days, we volunteers kept a watchful eye on anything and everything in the news
and participated in conference calls to pass along updates whenever we could.
Certain members of the group were involved in additional channels to try to
secure Steven and the other hostages' release. Details of these efforts cannot
be divulged at this time.

On
August 27 Steven’s mother, Shirley Sotloff, released her video addressing
Abu-Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State. Our group of volunteers
was briefed on the video the day before. Our efforts had been to keep Steven’s
story off the radar to prevent people from asking questions. Steven’s mother’s
decision to release an appeal for her son’s life was obviously going to
complicate that. No one knew if her decision to address the Islamic State
directly was the right choice but no one could fault her for doing everything
she could to save her son.

When
Shirley Sotloff’s video was released and went viral, our efforts went into
overdrive. Every word of her appeal was dissected. There were questions and
debates about whether people would assume Steven was Jewish by her comment that
“the Prophet Muhammad protected the people of the book,” which refers to Jews
and Christians.

The
days passed and the energy and imperative to keep Steven’s identity out of the
news began to feel nearly normal. Whatever else any of us had going on in life
was abandoned in favor of contributing whatever we could to a person who, in
spirit, became like family to us. From the beginning we knew the chances of
saving his life were slim. It was unimaginable to give up trying.

On
Day 14, September 2, I was scanning the news at work when I saw the first
report.The Islamic State had
brutally beheaded Steven Sotloff. The reports were unsubstantiated at first,
though it didn’t take long for the US to confirm the authenticity of the video
of the execution. I felt numb, weak, and sick.

I
was apprehensive about how this would affect Gregg, whose wife was in labor
with their second child at the time of the report’s release. Surprisingly, it
only took a few minutes before Gregg appeared on the Facebook group and, as
calm as ever, reminded everyone that despite Steven’s murder, our job was not
finished.

“Just
because Steven is no longer with us doesn’t mean the world can find out who he
really was,” he said in a conference call later that evening. “If IS finds out
post-mortem that Steven was Jewish and Israeli, that puts every other captive
in IS’ hands at risk. If Steven was Jewish, then he was an Israeli spy. If
Steven was an Israeli spy, then every other captive is an Israeli spy. Steven’s
identity being revealed could expedite the executions of every other captive.”

We
continued our efforts believing the lives of other innocents were in our hands.
I don’t recall which media source first published details about Steven’s Jewish
upbringing, but once it was out, we all knew it wouldn’t take long for details
about his life in Israel to emerge. When those details did emerge, there were
efforts to reach out to journalists to silence their articles like we had done
less than two weeks earlier.

“News
of his background has gone viral,” one Israeli journalist told me when I called
her up to sternly ask her to pull her article. “It’s on every website in the
world and we’re not going to be the only source not to publish.”

When
the Israeli government publicly confirmed that Steven was a citizen a few days
ago, our volunteer efforts officially ceased and the Facebook group “BRING HIM
HOME” became a forum for mourning.

Everyone
involved in the effort takes pride in the fact that the Islamic State was
seemingly unaware of Steven's Jewish or Israeli heritage at the time of his
murder. I didn’t have the privilege of knowing Steven personally, but after
this two week saga, I find myself also in mourning for a dear friend.

About Me!

My name is Michael Bassin and I am not a spy. Despite my insistence, people continue to be suspicious of me. Syrian border policemen, Emirati sheikhs, Kurdish businessmen, Israeli army officers, African warlords, and women I meet at bars with way too much imagination are fairly convinced I'm not who I say I am.

In reality, I am an international business development professional and writer based in Tel Aviv. A former columnist on Arab affairs for the Times of Israel newspaper, I have traveled to over sixty countries and written extensively on my experiences.

I am the author of the book "I Am Not A Spy: An American Jew's Odyssey Through The Arab World & Israeli Army." The book chronicles my life as an openly Jewish student living and traveling in the Arab world and serving in the Israeli army as a combat Arabic translator in the West Bank.